The world becomes a more hopeful place when you ask yourself what could go right instead of always assuming you know what will go wrong to prevent the realisation of a more exciting future.

There’s a reason Kodak never invented the digital camera. We become so focused on our own areas of expertise we fail to appreciate the gravitas of external factors which affect the world we live in. Our existing knowledge blinds us from seeing the possibility that we are wrong, or that what we have grown to believe will be disrupted by something new, altering the fabric of everything we know.

Instead of imagining what is possible we become defensive and reject what others are excited about out of fear — it’s human nature. What we have right now is good, why would we risk losing that?

Simultaneously, we underestimated the fluidness of change and our ability to affect it. We allow things to remain the way they are because it is the way they have always been and we have never known anything different. This is without appreciating the fact everything we see, use, touch, feel and interact with was invented and implemented by other people exactly the same as us. Every product, service and platform grew from someone just like you making a decision that meant they thought they could make the world a better place.

Sometimes they are right and the world is significantly improved as a result.

Other times they are wrong and we inherit the consequences while failing to reject the new reality imposed upon us more quickly.

That is the nature of the world we live in.

Change has consequences, and achieving it takes effort. Ideas are not enough to alter the fabric of the world we experience, implementation is the critical ingredient needed to recreate the recipe and produce something new.

There are only two modes of life — action and inaction.

Only you can decide which path you will walk.

That is what people don’t realise: you make a conscious choice to affect the world we live in. Everyone has criticised some aspect of life, whether that is a product they become frustrated with, a service that lets them down or something that doesn’t yet exist and would make their life easier.

Some people allow these images of clarity to disappear as quickly as they emerge. The value they could add to the world dissolve never to be realised.

Others, like Richard Branson or Sara Blakely realise how powerful they are. Branson founded Virgin Atlantic after one of his flights were cancelled and Blakely created Spanx from the frustration she had with close fitting.

Both show the impact deciding to act can have on their own lives and the people who decide to believe in there product/service vision.

Smartphones barely existed 10 years ago, the internet 20 years ago. These are fundamental technologies which were rejected by the market leaders of the time.

There’s a reason Nokia never invented the iPhone.

The true voyage of discovery is not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes.

This means not just seeing the world we live in, but looking at it from alternative perspectives.

Everyone has problems, criticisms of the world or issues to overcome.

Very few people are consciously looking for solutions.

Fewer still build those solutions

Be one of them

To Join My Futurist Tribe and Join a Global Community of Changer Makers who are actively co-creating the Future,